My TakeHong Kong lacks commitment to poverty relief
- A fifth of the city’s population are destitute and instead of arguing about how the data is complied, we should come up with long-term policy measures to tackle the situation
Another year, another jump in the number of people living below the poverty line. But we can always count on Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung to tell us that everything is fine and dandy.
A fifth of the city’s population, or 1.377 million people, are destitute, according to the latest official figures. This means an increase of 0.2 percentage points to 20.1 per cent; not a big jump? Well, it’s still the highest since 2010. And, during this whole time, our economy was expanding.
In a sense, Cheung is right; the headline numbers are misleading. They don’t factor in public welfare and housing support, as well as non-cash assets, because the government’s poverty line follows “international norms”.
“I don’t think our policies have failed,” he said. If cash handouts were taken into account, the poverty rate would fall to 14.7 per cent, or 1.01 million, about the same as last year.
Of course, without some background on the government’s budget on social welfare, it’s difficult to make sense of the numbers. But before we start, one has to ask: if Cheung thinks the poverty matrices being used don’t reflect the true poverty situation, why do we use them other than to follow “international norms”?
Retirees in many Western economies don’t have remotely the same levels of savings as those in Hong Kong.